As of right now I can think of no one better suited to writing this.
It is 12 in the afternoon and I am eating ice cream. It is my first meal today.
Except for seeing how little I have my life under control right now you can hopefully also see how much I love dessert, so let’s get started.
Hello and welcome to our weekly cooking event where Noémie, Yegor, Lynn and Moritz from MC will all cook a dish from a certain category.
This weeks topic will be Dessert.
The word dessert comes from the French desservir, which roughly translates to clearing the table. A reminder of the beginnings Idea of dessert.
A usually sweet or light meal to be consumed after the main course, or shortly before the table was cleared.
Dessert however has evolved so much further then that since the 16th century when the term was coined.
Now we have dedicated restaurants serving only Pancakes, Ice cream or even things like cookie dough. (Yes I know the last one sounds kind of disgusting but also I have to go there someday)
Dessert started as a very rare thing since sugar wasn’t very popular and more so very expensive in Europe until the 19th century.
Only when Europe colonized half of the world we brought back sugar cane from the Indian subcontinent.
This is why there is a very long tradition of sweets and sugary treats in Asia and many other parts of the world, but not so much in Europe.
All this being said one still must acknowledge the speed of mass manufactured sweets that all have some connection or another to Europe.
Pastries from France leading to readymade croissants in a plastic bag that someone can buy in America.
Swiss milk-chocolate and pralines that can be bought all around the world and my favorite Italian pistachio ice cream, which I have standing in my freezer ready to be consumed maybe tonight.
But it is great to be proud of those achievements and proud that all around the world these foods are being consumed regularly.
But we should never forget that The sugar in a croissant came from India after colonization, the chocolate beans for Swiss chocolate are grown in South America, only coming to Europe through (again) colonization and the pistachios for my favorite ice cream are from the Middle East, brought back through eastward expansions like the crusades.
I know this one is kind of a bummer today but sometimes we should think about why these products are all originally from these aforementioned places but still the most popular iterations of those products are often North American or European.
It is a testament to our times and the way production works today that South American coco beans are popular for being in Swiss chocolate.
With this I will leave you to our lovely recipes this week.
Please enjoy them none the less and make them at home.
Just maybe think about the relations we have to these products and how they end on our tables.
Hope you enjoyed this and talk to you next week!
Your Team Litija!
Click on the links below to find all the Desserts recipes.
